The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates! Solve the puzzle below to figure out where the cache is located.
For the past 16 years that I've been employed in the Social Studies Department at Altoona Area High School, I've taught almost exclusively government & civics classes. Occasionally, I've taught classes on global politics as well. After all, one could say that I have a comparative advantage in using my political science background to teach those kind of classes to our students.
Fast forward to this school year: I found out five days before the school year started that I was going to be teaching college-level (AP) Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. GULP! It's been a looooooooooonnng time since I took either Micro or Macro in my undergrad days. I'm slowly adjusting to what is essentially a math course with some social studies concepts sprinkled in. It's been fun so far, albeit very different than those civics/government classes that I still also teach.
One thing's for sure: economics definitely makes for more interesting geocaching puzzles than government does. So here's a pretty easy one for you. Everything you need to complete the "lesson" is provided below:
Scarcity and the Production Possibilities Curve (PPC):
When many think of the discipline of economics, the first things that come to mind are the exchange of money for goods & services, profit maximization, monopolies, gross domestic product, taxation, communism, capitalism, marginal benefit vs. marginal cost, etc. While all of those certainly pertain to the discipline, the true definition of economics is much more basic (and inuitive): it's the study of scarcity. Economics studies how individuals, businesses, and societies make choices about allocating limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants and needs. In other words: we all want stuff and there's a finite amount of resources to cater those wants and needs.
To demonstrate this phenemeon of scarcity, it's used to use what is referred to as a productions possibilities curve (PPC). Assume that we have a company: Signal Enterprises. This company only produces two products: bison tubes (Y-axis) and metal ammo cans (X-axis). As they produce more bisons, they must produce fewer ammo cans. The opposite can be said for production of ammo cans; the more ammo cans are produced, the fewer bisons can be made. Why, you ask? Because Signal Enterprises only has a finite amount of resources to work with:
- land resources: the rent cost OR the costs associated with maintaining the property on which Signal Enterprises operates
- labor resources: the wages and/or salaries paid to all of the employees
- capital resources: the equipment, machinery, logistics, materials, etc. used to make the products
- entrepreneurship: the amount of investment and risk-taking from financially savvy geocachers!
The figure above demonstrates trade-offs associated with shifting production from ammo cans to bisons, and vice versa. We refer to this as an opportunity cost. Anything along the blue curved line is an effective use of production, because all resources are being utilized most efficiently. Production at Point A is feasible, but an underutilization of resources. Production at Point D is not feasible, because Signal Enterprises does not have the land, labor, entrepreneurship, capital, and/or land to reach production at this very moment. Thus, anything produced along the blue curve is in the best interest of this company as far as maximizing production of these scarce resources at thiis moment in time. To go beyond that blue curve, something has to occur that expands production.
Test Question:
Assume that a wealthy investor decides to inject millions of dollars into Signal Enterprises, with the hope of increasing production of both bison tubes AND metal ammo cans. As a result, the company relocates to a bigger factory with machines that can produce these items in half the time and with fewer workers. Production would therefore be represented at what point on the PPC?
If A: Coordinates can be found at: N40° 30.252 W078° 24.324
If B: Coordinates can be found at: N40° 30.483 W078° 23.467
If C: Coordinates can be found at: N40° 31.259 W078° 23.770
If D: Coordinates can be found at: N40° 31.566 W078° 23.543
If E: Coordinates can be found at: N40° 31.459 W078° 24.931
Note: as the school year progresses, be on the lookout for the MEDIUM, HARD, and HARDEST versions within this AP Microeconomics series.